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"Unless there is a health reason certified by a physician, all parents have a duty to prevent harm to their children and to others by vaccinating," Arthur Caplan told me. Caplan's a prominent bioethicist at NYU, and an expert on vaccine policy.

"It is neglect to expose your child to vaccine-preventable disease," he added. "It is selfish to expose my kids to disease."

Why not vaccinating your kids might be a crime

Caplan's thought a lot about these issues. In 2013, he co-authored a notable paper that argued parents who didn't vaccinate their children should be sued or even prosecuted. And the paper's conclusions about reckless behavior are pretty simple, and evident on their face.

Take drunk driving.

People may have their own beliefs around how and when they drink alcohol – but once they run the risk of harming others, it really is in the state's interest to start legislating rules. How different is that from a preventable outbreak?

"If you choose not to vaccinate your child, and your child infects mine and harms or kills them, I believe you ought be held liable for your choice just as we would do for a drunk driver," Caplan argued.

Nicholas Diamond (no relation), a lawyer who's one of Caplan's co-authors, points out an important nuance: There's a difference between being sued by someone over the measles, and police showing up to arrest you.

The paper "tries to make the case for civil liability," Nicholas Diamond told me. "It's not an easy case to make," but the authors and their supporters believe it rests on reasonably solid legal ground. And in support of the authors' argument: There have been a number of lawsuits brought over parents' failure to vaccinate, some of which led to settlements.

But is not vaccinating your kids actually a crime?

"Legally, it would be very difficult to make out a criminal case, if we're just looking at the bare bones of how the law treats this sort of scenario," Nicholas Diamond acknowledged. But "a prosecutor with a passion and willingness for the issue could pursue it … even if nothing really comes of it, to shift the policy dialogue in favor of vaccination."

It's an idea that feels very populist — when in doubt, file a lawsuit — but it's not universally popular in academia yet.

For instance, Mary Holland, an NYU research scholar who's studied vaccines, argued that it's not always possible to prove where an outbreak began. She also contends that Caplan's recommendations ignore the potential dangers, noting that the industry acknowledges that vaccines can cause injury and even death to some.

But Caplan's argument seems backed up by the science. First, CDC and other public health officials are incredibly skilled at using contact tracing to track down the source of an outbreak. Patient Zero in any community is usually even easier to find when there's an atypical outbreak like measles.

Although the measles outbreak has mushroomed, many anti-vaxxers are sticking to their tune, the Los Angeles Timesreports. So how to change their mind? Some argue that we should spend more money promoting vaccinations. Others say we should lobby anti-vaxxers until they understand they're in the wrong.

But the science suggests it's not that simple.

Brendan Nyhan, an excellent political scientist at Dartmouth University, has done pathbreaking research into convincing anti-vaxxers to back off their flawed ideas.

His team's disturbing findings: Trying to educate anti-vaccine parents only forces them to retreat further into their shell. Attempting to correct false beliefs about vaccines "may be especially likely to be counterproductive," Nyhan dryly notes.

For instance, "when [researchers] gave evidence that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, that actually made parents who were already skittish about vaccines less likely to get their child one in the future," Dr. Aaron Carroll writes at The Incidental Economist, summarizing Nyhan's research. "When they told a dramatic story about an infant in danger because he wasn’t immunized, it increased parents’ beliefs that vaccines had serious side effects."

"Basically, it was all depressing."

So talking to anti-vaxxers might not work. Public shame might not work. What might?

Turn to the law.

"The real goal [of our paper] — and this is so often difficult in public health — is to utilize the law to affect the right public health changes," Nicholas Diamond said.

"Basic tort law or criminal law can both be tools to affect positive public health changes."

Another way to put that: What might encourage some parents to finally get over their fear of vaccines?